Birthday cakes date back as far as the Middle Ages when the English would conceal symbolic items such as gold coins, rings and thimbles inside their cakes.[citation needed] Each item was associated with a prediction. For example, a person finding a gold coin in a birthday cake would supposedly become wealthy; a person discovering a thimble would never marry.
Sometimes special candles are substituted for the many individual candles in the shape of a numeral. For example, on the fifth birthday, there may be one candle on the cake in the shape of the numeral five, and on the fiftieth birthday there may be two candles on the cake, one in the shape of the numeral five followed by the other in the shape of the number zero.





